Guild Wars 2

I, too, am intrigued. I associate the dredge with technology and the Flame Legion with magic, however there’s no reason why they couldn’t work together to get the best of both worlds (which that ascended item may be hinting at, some kind of fused technology). What I find odd is the dredge working with anyone. I doubt they’ve been forced or cowed by the Flame Legion, but I can’t think of any other reason why they’d help them. The politics behind this must be interesting (and possibly part of a large dredge rebellion story in the long term?).

I’m also amused and interested to see the Consortium jumping on the refugee issue – just helping their fellows out of the goodness of their heart, I’m sure. It’s possible that they just see people desperate enough to move to Southsun Cove and make it a little less miserable (boosting their optimistic tourist ventures), but I’m suspicious. I recently started wondering about other things the Consortium have their fingers in, and I won’t be surprised to find them continuing to scheme throughout this year’s event updates!

Huh, interesting Konig, I did not know that. I assumed a deliberate connection because when I had a character hit 80 recently I got an advertisement in the mail encouraging me to come and visit Fractals, in the typical Consortium advertising style. It does make sense that they’d jump on it after the fact, though, and make the best of it.

Still intrigued that Dessa has previous dealings with them, in the past/her world/wherever she comes from.

Having ventured into FotM for the first time just recently, I’d like the throw something into this discussion in case anyone has further information for me: what’s the Consortium’s connection?

I mean, Dessa says they would never launch this lab from Lion’s Arch, and it’s true that she doesn’t seem to be talking about LA as we know it. However, that also means that she’s not aware of where we’re coming through from and why. She’s too focused on her work to give it too much thought, but it makes me wonder how and why the Consortium set up a gate to her lab and started offering people the chance to go through it.

Fractals was added with Lost Shores, which introduced the Consortium as an untrustworthy faction out to make quick money, with little regard for safety and a tendency to not think things through very well. I’m starting to wonder if they just hooked up a gate to Dessa’s lab as a separate endeavour, without her permission as such.

I realised I should go to the wiki before I posted this, and I note this line from Dessa’s dialogue re. the Consortium:
‘Those money-grubbing connivers? It’s bad enough I lost my boyfriend to those shady “businessmen.” Take my advice: reject their advances. Nothing good will come of their machinations.’

Well now. Hint, hint? What’s the Consortium’s interest in this? (and, raving asura, any connection to a ‘boyfriend’?)

It’s interesting to hear that Ree has stated the love between Jennah and Logan is real (and mutual, I assume she meant?) – that tosses out a bit of the ambiguity I found interesting. There are a few ways to look at the queen, though, to my mind:

1) She’s a greedy, selfish woman who wants to keep her power at any cost (the bandit/Mantle anti-monarchy view) – in which case having someone as potent as Logan devoted to her gives her some personal power she can use with less limitation from the rest of her government.

2) She’s trying to hold on to the throne and the monarchy for the good of Kryta, because she believes that it’s a better option than the ministers forming any kind of council or one of them taking the throne in her place – in which case Logan is an ally to her and her throne against the ministry, but also a hero for Kryta’s interests.

3) She’s really just in love with Logan, a storybook hero made real (evidently just a bit of rough edges, plus dragon-slaying, makes him more appealing than straight-laced Dylan!), and she made an honest, youthful mistake in calling him away from the battle with Kralkatorrik, which she regrets. Even if she does put Kryta above all else, she didn’t mean to put her own well-being above Logan’s greater task, or to take advantage of him.

The uncomfortable factor in all of this is Jennah’s magical ability, of course. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that she would definitely have been fine without Logan, but she’s definitely not a helpless damsel, especially with Countess Anise with her. Even if she didn’t ensorcel Logan (and you can see why her enemies might think so), she’s a bit of an unknown quantity, and she does have to put Kryta above anything else (personal or the world) to be a good queen to her people. She’s not in the ‘unite the races’ camp – she’s sympathetic, sure, but she works for her nation.

A lot of people would like a lot less sylvari in the game’s story, heh. I’m fond of them myself, but they do rather take a lot of spotlight in the story so far.

I’m not sure how I feel about the idea of sylvari ‘parents’ being conveyed in the Dream – it doesn’t fit for me, somehow. However the idea of a Wyld Hunt based on love (such as ‘find this person, you Dreamed of them, they’re your soulmate) would make a fantastic sylvari saga. Which I now want to write. Heh.

If you’re feeling disconnected from the story/world, my advice is definitely to talk to named NPCs as FlamingFoxx said. Anyone with their own name is highly likely to give a unique response when you greet them, which may or may not be lore-filled. Around the cities, for example, there are all kinds of interesting people – not to mention the randomly triggered dialogues you may or may not hear while walking around.

A lot of the GW2 lore than I love in-game is just finding places which I know to be significant. Nothing beats walking around the site of the Henge of Denravi or the ruins of Droknar’s Forge if you played GW1 and were there back then. Finding the tomb of Saul D’Alessio or swimming around Old Loin’s Arch were pretty exciting for me. If you know the world, you can feel a connection with the places and things you see; if you don’t, NPCs in the area will often fill you in.

You have to go looking for it if you want the lore in-game, but it is definitely there. Think of it like being in the Priory. People don’t just rant legends at you, but if you do some digging, things you might have passed by can end up having a lot of significance. Playing an Order of Whispers character does help add another dimension too, absolutely (I’m particularly fond of their base in Ebonhawke).

I think rare drops are rare drops at the fact that everyone seems to think they’re entitled to buy them rather than just hope for them is odd, but that’s just me.

I understand that people take legendaries as a goal on their GW2 checklist, but if a weapon is meant to be extremely rare, it shouldn’t be something everyone can just pick up at their leisure, in my opinion.

thewanderer.8561:

having characters as deep as the ones in GoT series would be interesting to see as they collide against each other and change everything in Tyria, i.e. politics, lands, new alliances, and feuds. I really don’t mind drama and politics as long as lots of fighting involved

You won’t see characters as complex as those in A Song of Ice and Fire in an MMO – at least not in the same ways – because then you’d get even more complaining from players about how we’re just sitting here watching someone else get lauded as a hero while we players do the work. Deep, multi-faceted characters with complex motivations and elaborate plans work well when you’re being told a story, but if you want it in an interactive game, you’re best off doing it around a table and getting a GW who can actually interact back with you. The two media are very different.

Warring guilds in GW2 would be unlikely to be any more deep or interesting than the three Orders of Tyria, I suspect. I love some of the internal stuff of the orders, while you get it, and they have different flavours to them, but they’re there for a few cutscenes mostly. Any more machination and it might be better to watch, but we’d be doing more watching than playing.

Plus, don’t forget, factional stuff would go against the idea that ArenaNet have about pretty much everything being available to all players. An online world of warring factions and constant back and forth could be pretty cool, but it is not this game. This game tells lots of little stories.

DayLight.9603:

Embolism.8106:

I think of it as the Necromancer stepping halfway into the Mists, not quite here and not quite there… their physical bodies become immune to harm, but disturbances to this fragile state dissipates the life force required to hold it, eventually pulling the Necromancer back into this plane.

I really do love this description of the Death Shroud mechanic. So I want to ask a question regarding this – say for RP purposes, how would the fact that you gain Life Force through “pain, death and suffering” around your character be tied into this? Would this Life Force be akin to “Mana” or “threads of power” that the necromancer gathers in order to achieve this state of being halfway into the Mists…?

From a roleplayer perspective… I guess I would interpret it as the ability to stand in that half-way space (not really in the world of the living, but present enough not to be fully in the Underworld) through an understanding of life force. Maybe because I’ve roleplayed a blood magic focused necro in the past, but I’ve always seen Guild Wars necromancy as requiring a thorough understanding of life as much as of death (another friend of mine had a GW1 necro who was an initiated priest of both Grenth and Dwayna).

A lot of necro stuff isn’t straight killing, like yanking someone’s life away – it’s manipulating their life force in some way, weakening them from the inside, at the essence of their being. That’s complex, and requires a subtle touch. You have to know what it means to be alive in order to mess with the state, right? So death shroud, for me, would be something halfway between being a mortal necromancer here in the world, and being a shade or wraith based in the Underworld. It’s like you let yourself die a little, knowing you can pull yourself back, I suppose?

As for fueling it with ‘pain, death and suffering,’ it comes back to the idea that pain lets you know you’re alive. People remember and cling to their lives when they’re threatened. You could argue that a necromancer thrives on the strength of the will to live, even if that sometimes means pushing it to the brink and drawing power from that. Just my thoughts

Egon Vidar.9125:

It’s been confirmed that they do have “fun parts,” they just can’t actually make more Sylvari with them.

Don’t even get me started on this, haha – once my thesis is done, I am planning to write a blog post about how it doesn’t make sense to claim that sylvari don’t have “internal organs” only to then say that they have the parts required for sexual intercourse. I liked it better when the routine answer was what you see if what you get (that is, the ‘underwear’ leaves on a sylvari are all that’s there). Even eating is problematic when you start thinking…

Anyway, those issues aside, I simply meant that they don’t have the internal organs required for reproduction, like a womb for example.

Yep, while the aesthetic appeal (shall we say) is usually the main if not only reason in games, it is actually justified with the sylvari. It’s the same reason that sylvari males can have facial features that look like beards – they’re made to imitate human forms. The Pale Tree saw enough humans passing by in her lifetime to get the gist of the different genders, and although sylvari don’t have a reproductive system in their bodies they are each created to resemble one of the human sexes, at least on the outside.

In my opinion, grinding Fractals is absolutely not necessary (I’ve yet to set foot in there) because absolute max-stat gear is not necessary. I freely admit I’m a casual player, but what does one need maxed gear for, precisely? I imagine it might make a bit of a difference in WvW, but in general I have not felt pressed to get even full exotics any time soon.

Maybe I’m just not pro enough to notice the difference, but I hardly think anything’s forcing or obliging me to get Ascended gear.

Phaedre.2053:

Thanks for the constructive replies.. but I think I see a problem. I’m not wanting to do dungeons to ‘gear up’ per se… I’m wanting to see the content. It’s not the means to an end, it’s the end itself.

I’m absolutely with you – I have wanted to enjoy dungeons, but it dismays me what the standard definition of ‘casual’ players seems to be these days. I play casual – with friends, for fun. I’m not terrible, but I won’t have maxed gear for a long time.

I’ve had bad dungeon experiences before, but I recently started going with a friend who’s more into it than me but still happy to explain as we go and wait for people, and it was SO much more fun. Those people are out there! And yeah, a guild will help you find the right kind of people, but otherwise it’s kind of just luck.

I’m in Oceania so don’t know if we’ll ever play at the same time, but feel free to message me in-game; I’m trying to get dungeons for monthlies and I’ll happily take you along on a more chilled out run.

PS: I hear Twilight Arbor is particularly nasty. Unfortunately the “skip the trash, how can you not understand exactly what I’m going to do before I do it” crowd are a symptom of current MMO culture overall, I feel.

I highly recommend finding every weapon your class can use (that’s a lot of them, for warrior!) and unlocking the skills for them. It will give you a chance to try out different options and you might find one or two weapon sets whose skills you just really like. Weapon choice is part of the build, so explore your options! I fell in love with double axes for my warrior, after much deliberation.

I know a lot of people who have issues staying alive around levels 12-18 or so, and here’s my theory: traits. At this level you have access to trait points, but you don’t have many yet, so it’s very possible you don’t have many points in toughness/vitality yet. This will pass in time, if it’s your problem! Check out your attributes, and maybe compensate with gear if you find something handy.

I’ve been playing Pathfinder/D&D lately, and I think GW2 warrior is a lot like a D&D fighter – it seems simple, but the interesting part is in the customisation. Warrior traits are like D&D feats. Once you find a pair of weapon sets and a style you like, you should be able to settle in and enjoy it. Because I find warriors very focused on the weapons, though, do take advantage of the ability to weapon swap (sometimes getting some ranged damage in before the beastie gets to you can really help).

I suspect a lot of people are doing instances (dungeons etc) especially since Fractals of the Mists was added – it has a nice progression-y feel to it for those who like that, and keeps people busy.

If you want to find people, I recommend going to Wayfarer Foothills and/or wherever the Flame and Frost living story picks up (that’s this month’s event thing). People will gather around the event content. Hope you can find stuff to entertain yourself!

Rozcinana beat me to it, do check out that thread, it’s full of helpful tips it might take you ages to discover otherwise.

Welcome to the game! My general advice is to go with the flow, haha. Don’t worry too much about what you should be achieving because you’ll get through the levels without too much special effort, just explore and try stuff out. I’d also recommend 100% completing at least your first starter zone; you’ll get a nice bonus and learn how everything works along the way.

Sounds like a warrior to me! They’re a fun class, versatile based on the huge range of weapons you have to choose from with them. Of the two heavy armoured professions, guardian is more inclined to a tank/heal combo, so while guardians can be extremely hard to kill with all their passive buffs I think you might enjoy the weapon focus of the warrior more.

Darkdanjal.3401:

to bad, wish Arenanet shed some light on this, I dont mind searching stuff but knowing if you can get in or not would be a + :P

In general, we only know when we can get in somewhere like this when someone does it. ArenaNet put this stuff in for people to figure out! But I’m pretty sure this is just a teaser for now – there are plenty of those in the game as well as secrets we can actually access. Remember, if they keep up a once-a-month event update schedule, they’ll want plenty of material for stories to add!

Side note: looking at the Wizard’s Folly Tower now in the link above, the base actually looks like the jotun standing stone type things you can find in norn lands. Which is odd? It would make sense for jotun architecture to have once been more complex, but I don’t know if the stones we see in GW2 were always intended to be standing stones (fits with an astronomical alignment thing) or are the remnants of another style. Anyway, idle speculation!

[Edit]: Looking at it some more, the greenish-metallic parts higher up do resemble Dwarnven structure a lot, and the combination of that material plus the chains reminds me of things like the Frost Gate. So Dwarven or Dwarven built atop jotun..?

I’d love to know whether or not Lyssa was among the first group to come to Tyria. We have the implication of Lyss and Ilya, right? Probably humans originally, could have been Tyrian, could have been from wherever the gods were before Tyria… could be not human at all, though the twins aspect always struck me as a hint of her/their ascension at some point in the past.

I always thought it was neat that Vabbians in Nightfall often referred to the goddess as ‘Lyss’, because I took it to just be a cultural or language evolution thing. These days I wonder if there isn’t ore to that particular oddity…

I think it’s worth pointing out as well that any decent military organisation (and the Flame Legion is definitely one, I think the centaurs seems pretty militarised too) has a chain of command and provisions for if the leader is killed. Assuming the people backing the armies support the war effort (propaganda yay!), killing the lead figure won’t immediately crumble the army. Someone else will become the new Imperator of the Flame Legion or whatever, and on we go!

The best case is that after the loss of a leader, our enemies start fighting amongst themselves over the succession – weakening them and keeping them busy while the humans and charr deal with their other problems.

I don’t think the internet connection should be a huge deciding factor in getting daily dodge… but it does come down to timing. I know my understanding of the evade mechanic and my dodge timing has improved since I started doing this daily.

For those who just want to get it done, some tips (which any character above level 10 or so can do!):
– Sons of Svanir with bows in Wayfarer Foothills will do rapid-shot attacks sometimes; dodging one successfully can earn you three evades.
– Hylek in Caledon Forest (up north by the shore) with blowguns are the same as above.
– AoE attacks that give you the warning of a red circle can be evaded if you time it right (dodge just before it goes off, not too early; it just takes practice).
– Ranged attacks seem the easiest to dodge to me (you can see them coming more clearly). Archers are your friends.

Best way to get daily dodge, for me, is to start early. If you try and do nothing but dodge, your endurance won’t refill fast enough and you’ll get frustrated. If you just try and dodge deliberately in every second fight or so, it doesn’t matter if you don’t always make it. Good luck, OP!

’scuse my comparatively crappy graphics, my laptop runs this game smoothly…but only on lowest settings >.<

I’m quite proud of my necro, low-level though she is.

It’s more likely to be worth the laurels for people who play often, but casually – and/or those who aren’t likely to need or want Ascended items. It means doing your dailies on a regular basis can get you stuff which you might otherwise need to spend more time or have a stronger character for. Basically, an alternate route, which I’m sure is useful for some players.

To the OP, the boxes aren’t particularly customised, you get two pieces that are usable by your profession – the right type of armour, or one of the weapons open to you. It’s random so you have no guarantee it’ll be of any use to your character specifically. Basically, it’s a couple of rare drops in a can :P

Well, the “Giver’s” insignias made from Wintersday stuff comes pretty close: toughness, healing power and boon duration. But I see what you mean, there isn’t a vitality/toughness combo.

Honestly no one here can tell you much because we don’t know what ArenaNet will add in the future. The answer is “maybe”.

The key is in the capitalisation; there’s a difference between ‘serpent’ and ‘Serpent’. In saying “the krait are intelligent serpent-like creatures,” Ree was just using the English word serpent, meaning snake (more or less; it’s used for snake-like things and sometimes to refer to dragons). Krait are serpentine, it’s a description.

‘Serpent’ with a capital S is different, in cases like those Konig mentioned. There it’s a specific kind of thing in the world, or a title or something. I don’t know of anything definitively called ‘Serpents’ in Tyria (just checked, and the GW1 Manuscripts don’t capitalise it in referring to the Forgotten).

TL;DR: wurms are wurms, drakes are drakes, and dragons are dragons. Any or all of these could be called serpent-like, but none is the one and only Serpent!

^ The full Seer set looks like this
I think it’s acquired through rare drops at high levels, not sure where else? (Other than the trading post, that is).

Sorry, I don’t buy it. Credit for saying ‘crackpot theory’ at the beginning though, so I didn’t think you were totally in earnest and convinced about this! :P

DreamOfACure.4382:

This character is also one of the strongest characters we’ve ever seen. He can do necromancy, wield a greatsword, use elemental powers, and much much more.

I wouldn’t say that Trahearne is notably more powerful than average. Most of his special stuff (his necromancy aside) seems to be associated with Caladbolg, and that’s power the sword bestows – any old player character can pick it up and use the same skill set, if you pick the right story options.

Theories linking the Pale Tree and mysterious sixth dragon abound, in various shapes and forms. Too much of your theory doesn’t make sense though; other sylvari have Wuld Hunts linked to Zhaitan (Caithe, along with sylvari players, is supposed to straight out destroy it) for one thing. The whole undercover plot thing seems unnecessarily roundabout and unreliable, not to mention significantly unlike any other dragon.

To be fair, a focus is intended to be a magical implement – something to focus your magic through – so it’s more of a symbol that a weapon. You’re not expected to hit someone with it.

Still, hope you can find something with the look you want

Just this little update from January.

BioFringe.7945:

3 – to get the bonuses (Attributes) for that trait line (IE: Elementalist Fire Magic = +Power/Cond Duration)

This is very important. The grandmaster traits that become available may or may not appeal to you, same with the chance to add extra traits to your set-up – but at max level you really, really should get the third trait book in order to boost your basic attributes.

Put it this way, your two gold is going towards 100 extra power, or toughness, or whatever you choose – and that’s a hundred points you can move around when necessary. That’s a big difference in your potency. Don’t just disregard it.

Narcemus.1348:

Although I will admit that a Pale Tree growing in the ruins of an Elder Dragon’s realm is honestly a great symbol of the Pale Tree’s ultimate victory

I don’t know, it’s possible the Mother would not like a rival, especially a rival grown in an even more innately magical area of Tyria than her own :P I think a subordinate tree works better!

A lot of people jump on any semi-magical sylvari plant as “another Pale Tree”, but we have no evidence of anything like that, and the sylvari have a lot of magical plants that they tend around the place. Even in Guild Wars 1 days (long before the Pale Tree was even planted) the Maguuma Jungle had a lot of magical and semi-sentient plantlife. I think in this case the simple answer is much more likely.

If you hang out around these lore forums, you will find a lot of interesting stuff along these lines

We pretty much know that there either is or was (probably still is) a sixth Elder Dragon in addition to ‘Bubbles’, though most of Tyria doesn’t know it yet I don’t think (heck, most of them don’t know about Bubbles). Everything else is informed speculation though. It seems ArenaNet know they have a dedicated lore community and like to drop teasers here and there for us to find :P

Hah! Nice. There’s also the slave-driver boss in Queensdale…

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Foreman_Flannum

^ That post is good!

My general advice is to not rush, if you find yourself in an area where stuff is a higher level than you then it’s a good idea to back off if you start having trouble, but in general you can wander around freely. Be aware that there’s an asura gate in your racial city (Divinity’s Reach for you) which will take you to Lion’s Arch, and from there to any of the cities and their starter areas. Don’t feel obliged to do them all now though – you will be down-levelled, so you can go anywhere below your level at any time and not just one-shot things.

What else? Explore (there are cool hidden/subtle things AND it gets you exp) and do a little of everything. And feel free to ask questions Hope you enjoy the game!

Ok, first of all, there’s a personal story forum. Second of all, this isn’t really something to put in the forums – type the /bug command in-game and you can report it as a bug (tick the box for ‘blocking progress’).

As for whether it’s a glitch or not, I’m not certain, but the first option in cases like this is to leave the instance and try it again – sometimes it can be a one-off error. I don’t recall the mission off the top of my head so I don’t know if there was something else you were meant to do.

To be fair (and to continue to derail this thread a little, sorry) – Gwen is a hero for certain people with connections to Ascalon and a particular hatred of the charr. She’s a hero for that viewpoint. Ebonhawkers would obviously see her as a hero, because she represents determination, pride and survival in the face of invading monsters. She represents standing against the charr no matter what, with no compromise. For other Ascalonians, Gwen could be an unfortunate figure in their history who delayed peace by hundreds of years through her stubborn hatred.

I think she works well as a historical figure, and I think that only certain characters laud her as a hero. I can understand your frustration, but it’s a perspective thing; I at least don’t think the games/lore imply she is unambiguously wonderful.

As for Trahearne, I’m with Lutinz and Konig, I think it makes sense for Trahearne to remain Marshal of the Pact (unless someone extremely qualified turns up suddenly), but Orr was his area of expertise. As a scholar and strategist he should see where someone else’s expertise would make them a better field commander than him. I do feel a little bad for the guy, he started with a near-impossible Wyld Hunt and now having completed it he’s basically got another, unofficial one he’ll feel obliged to follow through.

The plant is…likely just a plant. A symbol and the first step to a new, living ecosystem (Risen Gorillas and whatnot gave me the impression that Orr was probably quite tropical in its heyday, but I’m not certain). Maguuma plants have a history of springing up pretty fast :P

I think Trahearne’s goal is simply to restore life, and I don’t see why it needs to be anything more magical or mystical than that.

The good news is I don’t know of any curse or disease in-game that would persist on your character more than a few minutes, so it’s probably just associated with an ability as the posts above me suggest

Gorgazm is referring to Southsun Cove, a small level 80 area that was released as part of the November 2012 event update and has stuck around as permanent content. That means there is precedent for new zones being added for free along with story updates. There may also be paid expansions one day – who knows? We’ll have to wait and see. But there are (probably) six Elder Dragons, most of whom dwell in zones we don’t have yet, so it makes sense that ArenaNet have plans to expand the world as we go.

I’d say you’ll definitely see more zones, but I don’t know when or if it will cost. As for expansions, we’ll see how much the (free) Flame and Frost events in Feb/March give us. The original Guild Wars added major campaigns at six month intervals (!) for the cost of a new game, but with enough content for one too – but there’s not telling whether GW2 will be at all similar.

The way that guilds work in GW2 is that when you join a guild, all of your characters are in it automatically. Your account joins the guild, not the specific character. You can also join multiple guilds, and choose one to represent at any given time – whoever you’re representing, you earn them influence and can participate in their guild chat.

When you make a new character, you always start out not representing any guild, which is what will have happened here (you get the ‘you are not in a guild’ message if you’re not representing any). You just had to go to the guild panel and choose to represent, and then it will stay that way until you change it.

Falunel’s right though, that wasn’t very nice of them. They should be able to see your account name next to the new character, and recognise who you are from that. It’s not your fault that you didn’t know the system yet, in fact I’d say the guild leader is at fault for not recognising his/her own member, even a new one.

Because GW2 allows you to join multiple guilds, I think it’s a little narrow-minded to make it a rule that you have to representing at all times, but each guild has their own rules of course. I hope they’re a little more understanding in future.

I direct suspicious parties to this blog post about probability in MMOS. The thing about probability is that some people seem lucky and some people seem unlucky, that’s actually chance at work. It’s easy to be tempted to read more into it when it happens to you, but the math will predict that streaks will happen.

I don’t find dodging to be a big deal, generally you can do it in the course of things – in fact most of these dailies you should be able to get credit for while doing other ones. The exceptions are things like crafting, which to be honest requires very little considering each instance of refining a material, or making any component, counts as something crafted. Turn twenty logs into ten planks and voila! Daily crafter.

The dodge achievement is making me think about dodging more, and making me notice when I dodge. Sure, sometimes I find I’m not getting it – and other times I get about three dodges in one roll because of a rapid shot attack. It works out.

While you may be right that the reasons for Dhuum being considered a bad god of death while Grenth is a good one (other than history being written by the victors!) are not laid out clearly, I think that the way Grenth is portrayed can give us some hints.

“To Orrians, Grenth was the god of death and judgment, and the patron of strict ethics.” He has been referred to as a god of justice (sorry, I can’t recall a source but I’m pretty sure?). If Grenth is a god of justice and fair judgement, it seems reasonable to assume that Dhuum’s judgements were less just?

Besides which, the gods didn’t just decide to get rid of Dhuum (they may have been keen to, but I don’t know) – Grenth defeated and imprisoned him. That seems to be a fair conquest with these gods, and very much in the course of things. Also, don’t forget that we now know that Grenth was the son of a goddess and a mortal. If he grew up among mortals before ascending to godhood, his ideas about what was a ‘fair’ way to manage death might have been different to other gods.

We don’t know if he just wanted to impress mama, or if he just wanted to become a full god, but he may have had ethical objections to how Dhuum treated mortals.

Awayne.5783:

same heart quests over different areas are getting pretty annoying tho and I’m just at level 17.

Heart quests aren’t exactly the fun part, although there are some good ones around. The fun part of levelling is the serendipity – dynamic events that happen around you, epic boss battles with two or three random people who happened to be nearby… It’s less structured than solo questing, but those moments are great. Sadly to some extent it does rely on luck, but my advice would be don’t feel like you have to stick too close to the hearts. Wander off and explore sometimes! You’ll find cooler stuff, and stumbling across it is more fun.

One of the ideas behind Guild Wars 2, with the down-levelling and everything, is that every zone should be worth visiting for players of any level. The fact that this event is based in lower level zones makes it available to newer players, but it’s also supposed to encourage other people to come back there. I expect we’ll see more events in the future based in a variety of zones.

I haven’t heard of anything like this on the table for the future, and I think that since it affects your personal story, it’s unlikely to be made available. You never know, though.

Hearts are a good thing to do to clear an area and to give you a good idea of where to go in the zone, but they’re not the best source of experience. Events are better, exploring isn’t shabby either. Hearts are also one of the few things that’s only tracked for the individual, most things are shared.

So I’d say it works either way, although a larger group will be able to take down veterans/champions that turn up around you as events, without having to gather allies from all over the map. That could let you get more events done. Plus, more people will kill more things, but as long as you all get a chance to hit stuff you all get exp. It’s really up to how it works for you though.

I find Wayfarer Foothills to be excellent for those days when events just don’t seem to happen around you (I usually find they happen near me all the time after I’ve finished my dailies; go figure).

Wayfarer Foothills has a lot of events all across the map, many of which cycle fairly frequently, and more importantly a huge number of them are part of chains of three or so linked events, so if you stumble into one you can get a bunch a lot of the time.

I would assume that the numbers that pop up in combat are what you’ve actually dealt to that specific target, but I can’t confirm for sure.